# Setup of a GeoNode project to test the available customizations

This section shows how to setup a GeoNode project called `my_geonode` that can be use as playground to test customizations. This setup is meant to be used only for development purposes.

Here are the steps on how to setup this environment

We prepared a [my_geonode project](https://github.com/geosolutions-it/my_geonode) that can be cloned and used for our customizations, alternatively it is possible to create a geonode-project from scratch (see [geonode-project repository](https://github.com/GeoNode/geonode-project) for more info).

Clone the `my_geonode` project in your workspace

```bash
git clone https://github.com/geosolutions-it/my_geonode -b 4.0.3
```

Navigate to the cloned repository

```bash
cd my_geonode
```

Create an `.env` file for a development environment by running the following command

```bash
python create-envfile.py --env_type dev
```

Replace the `GEOSERVER_ADMIN_PASSWORD` variable with the default GeoServer password inside the `.env` file

```diff
GEOSERVER_ADMIN_USER=admin
- GEOSERVER_ADMIN_PASSWORD=generatedpwd
+ GEOSERVER_ADMIN_PASSWORD=geoserver
```

Verify that the current `src/my_geonode/` folder is a volume of the `x-common-django` configuration. This will allow us to change template or static file and see the changes applied on the client on the fly

```diff
x-common-django:
  &default-common-django
  image: ${COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME}_django:4.0
  restart: on-failure
  env_file:
    - .env
  volumes:
+    - './src:/usr/src/my_geonode'
    - statics:/mnt/volumes/statics
    - geoserver-data-dir:/geoserver_data/data
    - backup-restore:/backup_restore
    - data:/data
    - tmp:/tmp
  depends_on:
    db:
      condition: service_healthy
    geoserver:
      condition: service_healthy
```

Check the `src/requirements.txt` file and ensure it is pointing to the correct version of GeoNode and geonode-mapstore-client

```
-e git+https://github.com/GeoNode/geonode-mapstore-client.git@4.0.x#egg=django_geonode_mapstore_client
-e git+https://github.com/GeoNode/geonode.git@4.0.x#egg=GeoNode
```

Build the docker images with following command

```bash
docker-compose build
```

Run the GeoNode docker container with

```bash
docker-compose up -d
```

Finally we can access to our development instance at

http://localhost/


#### [Next Section: Viewer and plugins configurations](003_CONFIGURATION.md)